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There are a TON of markets where DirecTV does the same with the CW DNS feeds. Without doing a count, I'd say there are a couple more markets with the CW DNS feeds than there are those with Ion mapped down to the local channels.

The difference is that EVERYONE gets Ion East, whereas not everyone gets the CW DNS feeds.

~Alan

Exactly. The CW feeds are DNS. Ion would be DNS plus locals. And the areas without CW HD cover a lot fewer people than Ion HD. I live in a major market that doesnt have Ion at all. Good luck finding a major market without CW HD.

That is what I meant. Larger advantage. Directv gets a lot of local HD in this move.

Mmm, at the risk of reigniting last millenium's hot topic. . . when did that happen? When TV's started automatically upconverting 1080i to 1080p at high refresh rates?

I've still been hanging on to the idea that 720p and 1080i are roughly equal with exceptions for particular suitability for some content types (like, fast moving stuff like sports is better on 720p). With "true" native 1080p still a very clear "cut above".

1080i has over a million more pixels than 720p. It's just that only half the pixels in 1080i are actually on the screen at one time, but the delay is so small that the human eye cannot perceive it. I hate the fact that most sports are in 720p, I don't care about any tiny bit of so-called motion blur if the picture is going to look like crap in terms of HD quality. I can notice the lower resolution and it looks like crap to me. You can also really tell the difference on tv shows when there are close-ups on faces and such. As far as I'm concerned, anything below 1080i/p is not really HD in my book(yes I know technically it is, but whatever).

Yawn. It is not 720p versus 1080i as much as the quality of the equipment itself and the production and the bandwidth. And your TV. Some TVs do a great job with 1080i. Some with 720p. All except pure native displays convert. So you are all seeing the results of the conversion, not the true signal. I've seen crap and great picture on espn/abc. I've seen crap and great picture on CBS (supposedly the king of 1080i).

Exactly. The CW feeds are DNS. Ion would be DNS plus locals. And the areas without CW HD cover a lot fewer people than Ion HD. I live in a major market that doesnt have Ion at all. Good luck finding a major market without CW HD.

That is what I meant. Larger advantage. Directv gets a lot of local HD in this move.

The CW feeds are DNS plus locals, the Ion feeds are basics plus locals. There is a difference, but yeah, the CW feeds wouldn't cover as many people as Ion even though, as I stated, I believe The CW DNS feeds are available in more local markets than the Ion feeds, the size of the markets are far smaller.

As for your second paragraph, there are multiple large markets (like NYC) that actually has their local Ion available in SD, so while the population of those larger markets adds up, the actual number of markets is small. However, unlike the CW DNS feeds, EVERYBODY gets Ion from DirecTV (Ion is in the lowest base packages).

That being said, I think CW HD-DNS feeds should not be discounted as unworthy. They have far more original programming than Ion, and they can be far more expensive for those who subscribed to them as DNS feeds (like me), and the addition would amp up the (HD) LiL count in many smaller markets where the LiL count is smaller than the bigger cities.

Yawn. It is not 720p versus 1080i as much as the quality of the equipment itself and the production and the bandwidth. And your TV. Some TVs do a great job with 1080i. Some with 720p. All except pure native displays convert. So you are all seeing the results of the conversion, not the true signal. I've seen crap and great picture on espn/abc. I've seen crap and great picture on CBS (supposedly the king of 1080i).

CBS has decent quality for TV shows, but their sports HD feed is the worst I have ever seen. So many artifacts I can barely watch it.